There Goes the Neighborhood: Entwined with You Chapter 3

Thanks for celebrating the blog’s two year anniversary with us! We had a lot of fun answering your questions, even though I discovered some horrific revelations about Matthew in the process. [Matthew says: It is hardly my fault that The IT Crowd is terrible.]

Previously, Gideon and Eva had sex! Seriously, that was all chapter two was, so yeah, you’re all caught up now.

Chapter 3

Gideon wakes Eva up the next morning, so they can talk about their relationship some more, which is exactly what this book was missing.

I opened one eye, then the other, so I could fully admire his three-piece suit. He looked so edible, I wanted to take it off him—with my teeth.

That sounds incredibly difficult, which would mean another potential sex scene would be long deterred, so I’m all for Eva trying this out. [Matthew says: Wait, is Gideon edible or is the suit edible? If Gideon is what’s edible, why does she want to take off the suit with her teeth?]

Gideon reveals that he’s “taken over” the apartment next door to Eva’s in order to make their reconciliation “suitably gradual.” Uhhh am I missing something? Is moving into the apartment next door to your ex somehow a sign of a gradual reconciliation and a suitable way to ease suspicions about your mutual involvement in a murder? This definitely seems like a tactic which should be widely adopted by all clever murderers (and their significant others) in the near future.

“…I’ll keep up the appearance of using my penthouse for the most part, but I’ll be spending as much time as possible as your new neighbor.”

I’m really not understanding why he had to get the apartment next door in order to only be there when he’s not keeping up appearances. He’ll still have to go into the same building and go to the same floor as Eva. Oh, but I guess people will be completely thrown when he enters the apartment next door, and they will have no idea that he sneaks into Eva’s apartment via the secret passageways he’s just built. Definitely an excellent plan, Gideon. Flawless!

What I think would be an even better plan is if every time Gideon showed up at Eva’s building he was in some sort of ridiculous disguise. “I’m just the pizza delivery man delivering our special Innocent Until Proven Guilty Pizza” or “I’m just an innocent local plumber and respected member of the community here to repair a leak! No collusion to see here!”

“I’m not a suspect, Eva. I’m not even a person of interest. My alibi is airtight, and I have no known motive. We’re just showing the detectives some respect by not insulting their intelligence. We’re making it easy for them to justify their conclusion that they’re at a dead end.”

Day had to try really hard to make up a reason why these two couldn’t just be in a regular relationship right now, didn’t she? It’s pretty insane that Gideon’s worried about insulting the detectives’ intelligence, but Day isn’t worried about insulting the readers’. At. All. [Matthew says: And here I thought the platonic bed sharing bet from Beautiful Disaster would be the most contrived thing we’ve ever seen in a book.]

Eva tells Gideon this is all well and good and that all she wants is to satisfy him sexually (because it flows so naturally into this conversation), so they talk about how much they crave each other (because, again, the natural flow of dialogue in this book is astounding). Gideon gives a romantically charged monologue, with swoon-worthy gems like,

“When I come, I come for you. Because of you and your mouth, hands, and insatiable little cunt. And it’ll be that way for you in reverse. My tongue, my fingers, my cum inside you. Just you and me, Eva. Intimate and raw.”

For some reason they talk about how Eva’s sex toys (her vibrators in particular) won’t be able to satisfy her. It’s bizarre because Gideon starts talking about Eva’s vibrator like it’s his direct competition, and Eva acts like it’s some sort of revelation that it’s not just an orgasm she’s after but that she specifically loves sex with Gideon. NO SHIT, DETECTIVE EVA. Here’s what I mean:

I thought of B.O.B., my trusty Battery-Operated Boyfriend, and knew that if Gideon were to stop touching me now, nothing would get me off. My passion was for him, my desire inflamed by his desire for me.

That desire sounds like a really bad infection, you guys should get that checked out. [Matthew says: Is it a law that any time vibrators get mentioned in romance, they have to be named “B.O.B.”? I swear I’ve heard that joke a million times.]

Obligatory blow job scene.

After, Gideon explains that he’s gotten a burner phone for Eva, and she can use it to call Angus (Gideon’s chauffeur), who can put Eva in touch with Gideon. He also informs her that he’ll be using the burner phone to track Eva’s location, because they have such a healthy relationship and all.

Eva is appropriately annoyed, but Gideon points out that he wants to keep her alive. This prompts Eva to realize that all of Gideon’s overly over-protective moments were because he was worried Nathan was going to come after her. I thought we had already figured this out, but I guess we needed another scene about this.

Also, in case you forgot about that lipstick stain on Gideon’s collar that made Eva suspect he’d slept with Corrine at his office, detective Eva realizes that it was blood on his collar, not lipstick. Because when Nathan had come to Gideon’s office to show him videos and pictures documenting his abuse of Eva, Gideon had reacted violently unsurprisingly. [Matthew says: Fucking bullshit. More like because this was obviously just a minor plot hole Day didn’t realize she hadn’t resolved in the last book, when it was actually relevant.] Well, I’m glad we got that unsolved mystery out of the way.

That’s all well and good, but with Nathan out of the picture, why does Gideon still have to track Eva’s every move? Residual fear?

“Damn it. Do you think I want to micromanage you? There have been extenuating circumstances. Give me credit for trying to balance your independence with keeping you safe.”

If someone else has to balance your independence, doesn’t that take away everything that puts the independent in independence?

But it’s all super okay and fine because Gideon put directions to track his phone in Eva’s purse. Okay, so equality and feminism all around.

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to reminding us of the book’s team of minor characters. We see Cary and his boyfriend Trey making out in Eva’s Kitchen, Eva tells us how awesome her boss Mark is, and Eva makes plans with her buddy-from-work Megumi to go out Saturday night. Oh, and the chapter ends with Brett Kline calling Eva. [Matthew says: Plot rockstar ex-boyfriend is the new plot puppy.] MY GOD. This sets up the next chapter perfectly for an all out attack of the minor characters.

13 comments

I know this is a super minor thing to be irritated about based on the general train wreck that is this book, but CHRIST can media stop perpetuating the idea that sex toys are somehow replacement and competition to having sex with someone? Fucking Christ.

I am so with you!! It comes out of nowhere in this chapter too. Why is it so hard to believe that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive? If Gideon isn’t jealous of another man he has to resort to bring jealous of her sex toys.

My parents are big fans of Korean dramas, so having grown up around them my theory is that they all involve in some way the following: incurable / inexplicable illness, star-crossed lovers kept apart by class, families, heretofore unknown potential for incest, and my favorite, gangsters. It is all pretty contrived and predictable, but at least all of those plot devices create, you know, drama. Sometimes the writers realize they’ve written the characters into such a mess that they need to order more episodes just to pull the leads out. Anyway, it seems like Day and these other writers either

Sorry, posted before finished – Day either never heard of gangsters or she is just too afraid of opening a can of worms that she doesn’t know how to resolve. Then again, we all saw how well gangsters worked in the Disaster books so maybe I should just keep quiet while we are ahead in this one.

Oh my god, as soon as you mentioned gangsters the first thing I thought of was Travis’ foray into the FBI and fighting gangsters and I was like, “These authors would ruin gangsters the way they ruin everything else! Like sex! And friendship! And puppies!”

But I agree about creating real drama. If you even look at a show like Grey’s Anatomy which pulls ridiculous drama out sometimes (they have a disaster episode like every year, and it’s like, how much can one hospital go through or how many doctor’s relatives can really show up in one place?) but somehow, at least in my opinion, it just works because it’s so much fun and the characters are great.

But the drama here is just like, “Everything is fine and I’m not even a suspect for murder, but I don’t want to insult the detective’s intelligence just in case, so we must be apart slightly more often than we want to be, but I’ll move in next door to you anyway.”

while reading the unresolved detective eva plotline, i am surprised none of got enraged by sylvia day on lipstick evidence reveal. i mean, eva who keeps going on and on about lipstick, eyeshadow, color, fabric cut of every damn dress worn in this novel cannot differentiate between blood spots and lipstick stains (which can be washed off unlike blood spots). it cannot be even blamed on faulty character’s projection because we are supposed to take at her words.